The modern Middle East’s most accomplished dictator

<p>Since 1989, Ali Khamenei has been the supreme leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran.</p> <p>He has outlasted and outplayed everyone else within the first revolutionary generation. His men now control all the critical institutions in the state. He out-negotiated the United States and western Europe in nuclear talks despite severe sanctions. He has pushed Iran's atomic program ever closer to a bomb. He defeated the United States in Iraq.</p> <p>And, as has become even more obvious as the Iranian people repeatedly rise up in nationwide protests against the theocracy, he has also pushed Iranian society to a breaking point.</p> <p>Filling in for host Cliff May is FDD senior fellow <a href='https://www.fdd.org/team/reuel-marc-gerecht/'>Reuel Marc Gerecht</a>, and he's joined by Ray Takeyh of the Council on Foreign Relations to discuss "the most accomplished — and, perhaps, most consequential — dictator in the middle east since World War II, Ali Khamenei."</p>